11 22 63 Alternate Ending (Stephen King book)
by jammm
Summary: A different twist on the conclusion of Jake and Sadie's Adventure, the meaning of the the card men, and the outcome of time travel.


*The following is a summary of an alternate ending which diverges from King's original plot line when Jake and Sadie enter the Texas Book Depository to stop Oswald. Unlike the original novel, I've written this ending in the third-person, partly because I see it as a film alternate-ending, and believe it's easier to envision this with third-person writing.

Prior to this point in the story, the only change I would make to King's version of the events is that Al Templeton, the owner of Al's Diner, would be shown to be more alone in the world. Perhaps when Al dies, our protagonist Jake looks up at Al's bedroom walls and notices that Al has no recent pictures of himself with any close friends or partners. Al reached out to Jake (somewhat of a stranger), because he had no one else to reach out to.*

* * *

As Jake and Sadie begin to climb the stairs of the Texas Book Depository, the dark skinned security guard – Bonnie Ray Williams - starts to chase them up the stairs, shouting at them to stop and leave: "Hey, ya'll ain't allowed in 'ere!"

Sadie urges Jake onward, but she herself stops, and begins to talk with Mr. Williams, working her womanly charms to persuade him to give up his chase.

Jake arrives on the 6th floor, he hears the first two shots. As Oswald goes to take his third shot, Jake turns a corner and puts a bullet through his head. "Oswald is dead, and Kennedy is alive" Jake thinks to himself, as the gravity of the situation settles in. Never before in the course of human history – anyone's history, has that statement been true.

Moments later, Jake is shaken from his thoughts as he hears Sadie's footsteps rushing up the stairs. Simultaneously, Jake hears the elevator doors open.

From the open elevator emerge two uniformed men. They turn and see Jake, gun in hand.

Behind them, Sadie steps out onto the 6th floor. Her tired legs begin to sprint towards Jake, and – breathing heavily – she shouts to Jake "Did you… did you do it!? Did you shoot him?"

The uniform men turn, guns drawn and see Sadie running towards them. They fire, hitting Sadie in the face and dropping her to the ground. Enraged, confused and in a futile attempt to save Sadie, Jake lifts his gun and opens fire on the two officers, hitting one in the head and striking the other in the arm. The officer with the arm wound steps back into the elevator and quickly closes the door.

Jake runs to Sadie, but it's no use, she's gone. In a whirlwind of emotions, feeling as though he's achieved his greatest goal and sacrificed his only love, Jake holds Sadie's body and promises that he will bring her back. Jake looks over at the dead police officer and without hesitating, strips the man of his uniform, dresses himself in the pants and shirt, and begins to head towards the stairs.

Looking down the staircase, Jake sees multiple officers on their way up. He looks at his gun, then without thinking about it, shoots himself across the skin of his forearm, causing significant bleeding, but what he hopes is only a minor wound.

Jake begins to descend the stairs, and as the agents approach him, Jake declares that he's been shot by a madman on the 6th floor, hiding behind the boxes. The officers run by him, guns drawn.

It seems the past is no longer so obdurate.

In the confusion on the main floor, Jake escapes the building, and shakes his head, fully understanding the ignorance and incompetence that let Oswald escape in that past that no longer existed.

Rounding the corner of a nearby building, Jake throws his uniform in the trash, using the shirt one last time to temporarily wipe his wound dry. Jake begins his race back to the rabbit hole.

* * *

It's a harrowing journey, but Jake makes it back to Lisbon Falls. He parks his car, walks past a sign warning of ongoing construction, and the spot where the yellow card man had met his end. As he begins to walk across the field, he hears a voice before he sees anything. Faintly, Jake can make out something that sounds like "eat'n glack… just eat'n glack".

Jake looks around for the source of the sound, and he continues walking towards a rabbit hole that he hopes still exists. Then, abruptly, he sees it: It's another yellow card man, standing there, seeming to flicker in and out of existence. His back is to Jake, and his message is clearer now: "Just get the meat and go back, just get the meat and go back…" over and over. Jake stands there staring at this apparition, unable to piece together what's going on, when suddenly, the card man flickers away, and then flickers back to life facing Jake.

Displaying extreme calmness, but using words that betrayed that façade, the card man sees Jake and beings to speak: "Jimla, Jimla, you don't know what you've done. You have to go back now."

"Why, what's happened? What have I done? What about Sadie?"

"Jake, you must go back now."

"Well who are you?! What's going on?!"

"Jake, all I can say is that we've been watching you. We watch Al too. We watch you whenever you come through the bubble. We're… well, we're a sort of guardian I suppose."

"So you've been protecting me?"

"No, we're not guardian angels. There are things far more important than individuals at stake. It's our job to keep the universe straight and together, like a bundle of twine. Each time someone travels back through a bubble, like the one here, twigs from that bundle begin to break, and if enough twigs break, the whole bundle can fall apart. It's our job to keep the bundle together, to harmonize the timelines, to tie up the broken branches."

"So every time I felt the past harmonizing…"

"There was one of us nearby."

Jake stares at the card man, who continues to flicker in and out of sight.

"Jake," says the card man, "you have to go now."

And with that, Jake steps over to a rock on the ground, puts one foot forward, and begins to enter the rabbit hole.

* * *

Emerging through the rabbit hole, Jake isn't sure if he's surprised or not, as he looks around and realizes he's in the back of the Al's Diner. Looking around, nothing seems terribly out of place. Jake takes a deep breath and heads to the front of the diner. As he rounds a corner, he bumps into Al, who is clearly startled as he drops a tray of food and throws his hands to his chest. "Dear lord, Jake, you scared the lights out of me!"

"I, uh, Al, you're alright! Oh my God!" Jake finally gets out his intended phrasing, as the two both seem shocked to see one another.

As Al composes himself, he gets a slight look of confusion on his face, which quickly turns to nervousness. "Jake, what… what are you doing back here?"

Jake looks at Al, realizing the implications of his time travelling adventures: If Jake saved Kennedy in 1963, then Al didn't waste the last 5 years of his life in Texas hunting down Oswald. He never developed cancer, and he never needed to pass his lifelong mission onto Jake. Jake isn't supposed to know about the rabbit hole, in fact, he wonders to himself: "Does Al even know about the rabbit hole?"

Al snaps Jake out of his deep chain of thoughts – "uhh Jake, you alright? You didn't, ah, see anything out of the ordinary back there, did you?"

Jake takes a second to collect his thoughts, and then decides that if anyone needs to know the full implications of this mission, it's Al.

"Yes, Al, there's definitely something a bit out of the ordinary back there" Jake says, finally cracking a bit of a smile.

Convincing someone that they exist in an "alternate universe" is never an easy task, but Jake decides to go back the beginning, and explain everything to Al. As Jake begins to explain, a middle-aged women walks into the dinner with a smile on her face and car keys in hand.

"Well, well, well, looks like my ride is here," says Al. "Jake, this is my wife, Brenda. Brenda, this is a friend of mine Jake, don't think you two have met."

Jake and Brenda exchange pleasantries and Jake casts a glance towards Al, wondering if it's okay to keep telling the story of the past.

"Oh, don't worry about Brenda here, she's the love of my life, knows all about the little portal back there. You won't weird her out with any tales."

And so Jake decides to carry on. "Well, you see Al. You called me in here one night… " And then Jake trails off, again wondering how much of this story to tell. Does he really want to tell Al that in his past life he died before he was able to accomplish his mission?

"You see Al, in our old world, back in 1963, a president was shot and killed, and it changed the course of history. You were determined that if you could stop that assassination from happening, the world would be better off."

Al's face is struck with a look of bewilderment, and then his eyes slam open and he looks at Brenda, then back at Jake.

"Oh my God. Are you the fourth man? Jake, you're Officer X? People have spent the past 50 years looking for you! Most people think you're the shooter. There are more conspiracy theories about that shooting than about the moon landings!"

"What do you mean?"

"Jake, you're the mysterious person that was with Sadie Dunhill, the man who stole an officer's clothing and then disappeared!"

Jake stares hard at Al, and then pieces it all together. "That was three days ago for me."

Jake, Al and Brenda spend the rest of the night in the diner, trying to piece everything together, and being constantly interrupted by Jake's desire to look up aspects of his former world and see how they've changed. He seems relieved to find that most things are exactly the same, or slightly improved. Vietnam still happened, but Martin Luther King Jr. is alive and the world seems to have turned out okay. It looks like Jake meddled with the past just enough to not break the bundle of twigs.

As the evening comes to a close, Al offers to drive Jake home.

On the ride home, the conversation lulls, and as Jake sees Al and Brenda sitting together in the front of the car, he's struck with feelings of loneliness, and longing for Sadie. He looks at Al, thinking about how amazing it is that Al is alive and healthy. Not just alive and healthy, but happy too!

Going back to save Sadie would mean risking Al's life and his relationship with Brenda. Is it his place to put that on the line to try and save Sadie? If the mission was to save Kennedy – then hadn't he succeeded? Hadn't everything turned out nearly as perfect as it could? Could he really go back and jeopardize so much just to put an end to his own feelings of loneliness?

With these thoughts weighing heavy on his mind, the car pulls up in front of Jake's house, and Jake is relieved to see it looks just as he remembered it. He thanks Al, gives a smile and walks up the front steps. He lifts the welcome mat at the front door and gives a little smile as he pulls out the key and unlocks the front door.

"Finally home, I guess", he thinks to himself.

Sighing heavily, Jake kicks off his shoes and heads straight upstairs to his bedroom. He walks over to his bed and sits down. It's just then, as he reaches over and turns on the bedside lamp with a *click*, that he also hears the breathing – that breath in the room that belongs to him, but isn't coming from his lungs. Somewhere in the back of Jake Epping's mind a bundle of twigs makes a crisp *snapping* noise, and as he glances backwards onto the bed, he turns just in time to see another Jake Epping roll over and open his eyes.


End file.
